This is for all of you animal lovers out there. That includes birds, insects and, well I don’t know about cockroaches. For me, the jury is still out on that one. But on a high note, I refuse to smush ‘em. That’s my husband’s job. No cleats though.

Me: Are there animals there?

Erik: Yes. Insects, plants—

Me: Are they all ones who have died or can you create your own Chihuahua?

Erik: You don’t really manifest another life form. It’s pretty wild. You can tend to plants and animals, but you’re not an owner of them. You’re a companion, but you don’t have ownership. There are different breeds of plants and animals that no longer exist on Earth or that haven’t come to exist on Earth that are in this higher dimensional planes.

Me: Even T-Rex?

Erik: Yo-yo, dinosaur!

Jamie (to Erik, in mock frustration): Why? (To me) He says he’s going to follow me around all day and say, “Yo-yo, dinosaur.”

Me: Oh no!

Jamie: Better than apples!

Me: Yeah, I remember he did that.

Jamie shakes her head.

Erik: Yeah, anything that existed or is going to exist on Earth is here.

Me: Do you have to take care of dogs and cats and so on or can they survive on their own?

Erik: Yeah, they can survive on their own. Remember, this is not a place where we have those needs—like you need water, you need food, you need this. So, animals can tend to themselves and there’s a pure line of communication between the two of them. You can talk to the animal and the animal can call back. Again, when I’m talking about conversations it’s more from the heart. I didn’t realize how much that frustrates me until we had these interviews today.

Me (in a voice that’s like a mother talking to her baby): So you don’t have to meow like a kitty cat?

Erik: No, but I’m sure when you get here you’ll still do it anyway, Mom.

Me: I’m sure. There was another question I wanted to ask about animals, but I can’t remember it for the life of me. What was it Erik?

Erik: How people can be animals?

Of course we are, but I didn’t want to pull rank on the guy.

Me: Yeah, that’s right. We can be animals.

Erik: If there’s a life form, then a person can be a part of that life form. So they can be an animal, an insect, a plant.

Oh, Erik. An insect is an animal. You must have missed that lecture in biology class.

Me: Oh! I remember what I was going to say!

Erik: What?

Me: Do you have a particular animal companion? I mean, do you hang out with a dog, a cat, a snake or anything more than other animals?

Just a little note from me (Mike) if it takes a while for me to approve your comments please remember, I’m in a different timezone (UK) than most readers on here. I may be going to bed just as you are getting up. I’m logging in to check as often as possible, but please be patient if I have not approved your comment/s immediately. Thankyou

Now for our feature presentation.

Eclectic Horizons recently invited one of our long-time clients and Channeling Erik family member to ask questions of Erik through psychic medium Kent Lehman. Following is the transcript from the session.

Kent: OK, let’s get started because Erik’s ready. I know when he comes strolling in because he plays a theme song. I hear AC/DC and there’s Erik!

Client: Awesome!

Kent: Yes he strolled in and is waving “hi” to you.

Client: Hi, Erik! So the first one I have is kind of a multi-layered question. One of my favorite things that Erik brings up on radio shows and blogs is how we’re all equal like the soul of a person, a dog, a tree, an insect, you know cow, etc and that there is no hierarchy so I was hoping to talk about, or ask him some things about that for my first few questions?

Kent: Sure.

Client: My first question is about a dolphin and I wanted to ask specifically about Kathy who was one of the dolphins who mainly played Flipper on the TV show most of the time. My understanding is that she died in the arms of her trainer, who is now an activist for dolphins, Richard O’Barry, and some of the things that I’ve read state that she stopped breathing by choice. Basically kind of committing suicide in a way to show that that wasn’t a great existence for a dolphin and I was wondering if Erik could ask her questions for us?

Kent: OK, yeah definitely. He’s…

Client: Kind of like the celebrity interviews!

Kent: Exactly! It’s cool because he is demonstrating what you are talking about (although he is being a jokester by saying he’s not in a pool and he can’t really have a dolphin sitting in the chair next to him!)

Erik: With us all coming from God or Source, then we are all the same and there are not “less than” energies that come from there. So we make our own choices on what we want to do and what we want to experience and that can alter our individual vibrations up and down, and that’s part of learning about ourselves.

Client: So did she actually do that? Did she stop breathing by choice?

Erik: Here, I can let her speak!

Kent: She’s saying it was a combination of her body wearing down and she had accomplished what she had come in to do. That was part of her contract with her trainer that set him on his path.

Kathy: The Angels came in and assisted me to allow me to die in my trainer’s arms rather than him finding me somewhere.

Client: OK, what was her mission for her lifetime? That was her contract for her trainer. Did she have a separate mission herself, too?

Kathy: For me, it was a more universal thing. A bringing of awareness. Rather than being a dolphin running in the wild, like having a wild dolphin life!…

Client: (laughing) That’s cool, I love that! Has she ever had a human lifetime?

Kathy: Yes, but I liked coming back as a dolphin because I feel like it was a “higher” form.

Client: Awesome, no I totally believe that! That’s cool because my next question was basically how it felt different to be a dolphin versus a human so she kind of answered that.

Kathy: With the human you have so many more chances for growth because with your ego and your filters it provides for much more conflict and that provides growing experiences. Whereas for a dolphin in some ways it’s more instinctual, but we still have very high intellect and we can have an ego but it’s a little bit different. It’s a little bit simpler, less complex. We do have our own groups and families and pods with our own personalities, but without the need to dominate the environment like humans.

Client: Well thank you so much for talking to us! Is there anything else that she would like to share?

Kent: She really thanks you for asking about her.

Client: Awww.

Kathy: My main mission again was to bring awareness—awareness of dolphins and all living creatures. My way was to be domesticated so that people could see and interact (with me) and with my trainer to help show that all life is precious and that it needs to be respected.

Kent: She’s showing how we use trees for wood or fuel and part of that is the process of what Mother Earth provides and what we use to survive and that’s fine but she hopes that we respect Mother Earth and respect everything. That doesn’t mean that we should not touch anything.

Client: Right. OK, well thank you so much! Well, kind of along the lines of what she was saying, I don’t have a specific one in mind but could Erik give us a message from a tree or a plant that has maybe had an incarnation as both a plant and a human?

Kent: He’s acting like he is exerting a lot of effort to drag a tree in here!

Erik: Hold on, trees are harder to drag in here!

Client: Oh, sorry!

Kent: No, he is laughing and just being a smart ass, he’s just being fun! OK, it’s very fascinating, when he’s talking to this spirit, this soul that has been different incarnations. It’s very similar to the dolphin. It’s very interesting how high the vibrations are of the dolphin spirit, almost like an angelic vibration.

Client: Oh wow, so you definitely notice a difference between someone who most recently was human and the plant and the dolphin being higher vibrations?

Kent: Yeah, it’s interesting because they are like teacher spirits, like where Erik is progressing to…Wait, he is being self-deprecating but he is smiling when I say that about him progressing but he knows that he is a “teacher guy” now.

Client: He is!

Erik: When spirits come in that way (as a plant or tree) a lot of it is to feel that denser vibration but without having all of the stuff around a human incarnation. As a tree, you are relatively helpless. You can’t move and you’re basically stuck there but that is part of the simplicity. So these higher vibrations like to come in to a simpler incarnation as a way to teach.

Client: So along those lines, one of the things that I struggle with, I guess, and I think that maybe other people feel this way is the idea of when, for example, a tree gets taken down and for me also specifically (and I know most people make fun of me for this) but I have issues with the idea of weeds. Sometimes I feel guilty plucking weeds. So can he maybe talk about that a little bit? Do they kind of come in with that expectation that it may happen? Is it like traumatic or can he talk about that a little bit?

Kent: OK, Erik just stepped forward…

Client: Oh yes, sorry, I meant it as a question for Erik. Please tell the tree spirit thank you for coming through.

Kent: Oh yes, no worries, they don’t have egos there so they are just thrilled to be able to talk and share!

Client: Awww.

Erik: Remember that everything on Earth has a cycle and everything on the Other Side has cycles too. But especially on the Earth you have a cycle that is very much condensed and limited. There’s birth and death or like I like to call death more like the real birth because to me it’s easier to go back to the Other Side than it is to incarnate. So weeds have life forces but they are not long anyway. So when weeds sprout up…

Kent: He thinks it’s really cute by the way that you feel bad about pulling weeds!

Client: I do, I feel so guilty!

Erik: But drop the guilty shit, OK? That’s OK if you feel bad, but that’s what the plant spirit was saying to me is the respect thing. If you have respect for them and you’re not just yanking them and discarding them, you don’t need to feel guilty.

Client: Just doing it respectfully is OK.

Erik: Yeah, they have a life cycle and even just walking on the side-walk you may step on an ant and not even know it, it’s just the cycle of life. So weed spirits don’t have trauma because they got pulled. That’s just their whole experience. Weeds, plants, everyone here we all have a cycle, a limited time here.

Client: That’s cool, that answers my question.

Kent: Oh, he’s jumping back in, he’s saying one of the key things is showing respect and love for all of God’s creatures because it’s not an unloving act to pull a weed out but you can still show love because it helps increase the vibration of everything. You might feel bad for having to pull it out but having that love and respect that helps feed all of the energy around you and increase your vibration.

Client: That kind of makes sense just kind of acknowledging it as a being rather than just dropping pesticide on it.

Kent: OK, now he’s showing bugs on the wind-shield and on the car grille!

Erik: We all know going in that anything can happen. We can be walking down the road or flying through the air as a bug and SPLAT!

Client: (laughing) OK, so the same kind of idea to be respectful of bugs and if they happen to fly into your wind-shield obviously that’s not your fault or like you are maliciously squishing them or whatever.

Erik: And some people have no qualms about smashing bugs and that’s fine. That’s their belief system. But if you project respect and love energies to all living things, that is what helps improve the world around us.

Client: OK, so along those lines, are we drawn to plants that have a message for us? For example, like a passion flower if we need calming. Is that how flower essences work?

Erik: Yeah, that’s why flowers are so universal and why they have that calming effect, especially for people that are intuitive and open. It happens for dudes, too. They may not admit it, but if they actually take time and look or smell a flower, then the flower can bring memories of Home (where Erik is). And it’s also a great way for spirits to use as symbols and signs from passed loved ones. A lot of times you will anchor a flower or plant with somebody and that’s a great way for them to get your attention. They can put their energy into a plant or a flower and then for some reason as you are passing by you turn and think, “Wait, I didn’t see that before”. That peony bush or whatever and while you’re wondering why you are looking at it, you remember Grandma.

Client: Thank you!

Kent Lehman is a psychic medium and trance channel based in Lakewood, Colorado. He works together with his wife Cindy Musil in their business Eclectic Horizons providing private sessions to clients around the world. To learn more about their work, please visit their website, check out their blog, sign up for their monthly e-newsletter, and follow Eclectic Horizons on Facebook.

Today’s feature presentation will be Erik’s take on the Language of the Afterlife. And I’m sure a few of you will be relieved to know it extends beyond four letter expletives.

Hold onto your seats, here we go.

Channeling Transcript

Me: Do they have a universal language where you are, Erik? I mean, how do souls speak over there?

Erik: It’s kinda the same as telepathy, but it has to do more with feeling what’s being said. Feelings are energy based and we are energy so… Mouths don’t move.

Me: Oh!

Erik: Well of course! It’s not like we have real lips and vocal cords and stuff! We don’t need that. There’s a lot to say about—oh, let me just show you.

(Long pause)

Jamie: Ah! That was a really cool visual.

Me: Hm!

Jamie: Um, if you can imagine a person standing in a room and all of the thoughts and words and how they feel are rotating around them, almost like a solar system.

Me: Uh, huh.

Jamie: And so when another person walks up to them, all of the information is accessible.

Me: Wow!

Jamie: It doesn’t have to be translated.

Erik: Yeah, it’s like information is coded in energy. Information is energy and vice versa. So since we’re all energy, including you guys, all that information is accessible, but it’s more freely accessible between souls over here. How do you think psychics channel or tap into the past or present? How does someone in the car next to you at a stop light sense when you’re watching him pick his nose and then turns to look at you?

Me: Oh!

Erik: It can be felt, merged with, communicated in many different ways. But telepathic, well, I guess that’s the best way I know how to explain it, Mom.

Me: This is all so fascinating, Erik. Thank you, my love.

NB. Just a little off topic I know, but a big congratulations to the US Soccer Team for your superb efforts against Belgium. You’ve come a very long way in such a short period of time. And for others I have no doubt you’ll be glad the World Cup is over. In 2018 it’s hosted by Russia, which should be interesting. Mike

It’s been a while since I channeled Erik through psychic medium, Kim O’Neill, so I had collected several questions over that period of time. Naturally, I missed him deeply, so my first words were: ‘Erik, hi Sweetie, I love you.’ Kim giggles and mimics Erik as though he’s rolling his eyes at my sappiness, which was quite typical for him. He says, “Hi Mooommmmm,” in mock exasperation. “You’ve been talking to me all morning asking me to speak to Kim. Hi Mooommm. I’m here.” Kim laughs and says “He wants to tell you you’re micromanaging.” “I love you too, Mom. I’ve been flipping between you and Pappa and Kristina and Michelle and Annika and Lukas and I’ve been spending time with Denise. I feel exhausted. I’ve been trying to give everybody equal time.“ Kim asks him, “Usually you talk a mile a minute. You seem really tired today. What’s going on?” Funny, his answer failed to surprise me. “I’ve been partying a lot, so I’m really tired.” Kim asks, “Who are you partying with?” Here, Erik interrupts her question to share some confidential information that I can’t publish. I had been curious about my maternal grandparents who both passed in the early 80s so I asked him, ‘Are Nana and Pa Pa there with you, Erik?’ “I’ve seen ‘em,” he replies. “We’ve visited, but they spend most of their time playing with Arley. Nana has cooked for me. I’ve been spending pretty much all my time with you guys.” ‘Are you still spending time with Allie and Jordan?’ I ask. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, these are two of his friends who preceded him in death. “Mom, you’re asking for messages about everyone else, but when you were talking to me today you wanted messages for you. I’ll talk about Allie and Jordan later. I’m happy to, but I want to give you messages first then I’ll come back to them.“You’re the best Mom anyone could ever have.” Erik chuckles and says, “Mom, we’ve talked more back and forth in the last 3 weeks than in the last couple of years, haven’t we?” Kim shares that he finds that fact amusing. “I’m sorry for causing you trauma, and I was hoping you would understand and that you would forgive me. I think you already have but it’s going to take me a little while to forgive myself for putting you all through this trauma for my selfish needs. I feel so much happier now. It wasn’t about you guys. I just needed to regroup. I was so confused about who I was, where I was going, what I wanted, and I felt depressed and I felt like I had nothing to look forward to. I want you to know how much I love you and how I treasure all the time we’ve spent together. I’m talking about lately. I like to talk to you when you’re driving. I’ve come to you a couple of times while you’re sleeping, in the form of dreams. I’m going to keep doing that.” “How come I can’t feel you, Erik? I want to feel your presence. I want some hugs,,” I plead. “You are capable of receiving that, but I’m not capable of extending that energy yet. I’m working on that. I’ve been working, working, working really hard. I wanted that to be your Christmas present, but it’s gonna take a little while longer. Maybe Mother’s Day. I have to work on extending my electrical energy so that you can not only see me and hear me but you can feel me. It’s definitely possible and I’m working on that right now. Oh well, there goes my surprise!” He laughs. I’m so desperate for any form of regular contact with my son so I ask him, ‘How can I best perceive you now before you’re able to do that, Erik?’ “You’re already an excellent channeler,” he insists. “The more you speak to me, the more I get a chance to practice extending my electrical energy to you. Whenever you and I talk back and forth I try really really hard to extend my energy to you. Remember before when I use to puff out my chest so I would look like, you know, so I would look bigger? You remember Mom when I used to do that when I was little? That’s sort of what I’m doing now but with energy.” ‘Can you tell me about the therapy you get there?’ I ask. “Yes, I still have therapy. I have this really cute therapist. I’m spending time with her while you guys are sleeping and nights when I’m not going to come to you in dreams. She’s pretty much given me the seal of approval that I’m healed.” Kim interjects in mock sarcasm, “Well, Erik what took you so long?” and he answers her, “Yeah, I know! Everybody’s been kinda surprised over here that I did what I did and then I didn’t have that much to heal. I really didn’t have that much to heal.” My next question is a very abstract one. ‘Erik, was your suicide part of a plan to help you understand loss? I understand your depression was mostly a result of the serious losses you experienced in your past lives. Was suicide part of the plan so you could see the effect your loss has on other people, so that you could watch us grieve while on the other side you have the understanding that there is no true loss because we’re all immortal? Did that help make light of loss for you?’ Kim interjects before Erik can respond, “Oh you’ve gotta write a book, Elisa. That’s just from me, the peanut gallery, not from Erik.” Erik replies, “You mean was it always my destiny? No. No. But, have I grown and learned and evolved because of this? Have I put that issue of loss to bed? Yeah, definitely yes.” With a sigh of relief I tell him, ‘Good because I just don’t want you to have keep coming back over and over to go through the same thing.’ “No, absolutely not. I never will go through all of this again. I’ve let go of loss. The depression was like a secondary issue for me. It was mostly confusion and the sense of loss and the sense of hopelessness and now that’s all gone. All that healing has been done from past lifetimes. I figure I have one more lifetime to go, that’s it, one more.” I brace myself for the next question: ‘Okay. Erik I want you to be really, really honest because I really need to know this. What could I have done differently? This is part of my evolving so I really need to know, Erik. You can’t pull any punches with me here. Everybody’s flawed and needs to evolve, and of course I’m one of those people too.’ Kim says “Elisa that’s one of the bravest questions I’ve ever heard, because having spoken with Erik several times now, he has got to be one of the most irreverent, candid, forthright spirits I’ve ever spoken with in 22 years.” Now I was REALLY nervous, but I answer her, ‘Well good, I want to know the hard cruel truth because otherwise I’ll never grow as a soul.’ Erik responds, “Nothing, nothing, because Mom I really wasn’t listening to you. Once I got to be about 16, I wanted to make my own choices, I wanted to make my own decisions. I would really get aggravated with you or Pappa if you gently tried to push me or suggest. I wanted to build my own independence. You were so understanding. I remained on the earthly plane for as long as I did because of you. You were always either turning the other cheek or you were being understanding and that made this earthly journey so much easier for me and is making it easier for everybody else.“I should have listened. And when I was upset about something I should have talked to you. My therapist puts it this way: I should have opened up a dialogue with you about what was bothering me. I know you would have listened to me very calmly, very rationally. You wouldn’t have been like a regular mom like jumping up and down freaking out. You know, like ‘You won’t! You won’t! You dut dut dut dut…’“I know that you were really calm, centered, somebody who would listen. Mom, you’re a great listener. I want to suggest to the other kids that they talk to you more because you’re such a good listener, and because you’re not only a mom, you’re a friend. I should have come and talked to you. If I had done that on a regular basis, I think I would have still been there. I was so touched by his answer, it was hard to go on, but, choking back my tears, I ask, ‘Erik, right before I left the house 10-15 minutes before you killed yourself, I fussed at you about returning my iPhone to me and picking up the Pit Bike that you took to a friend’s house without our permission. Was that the last straw that made you pull the trigger?’ He laughs and says, “No! God no! You told me to do stuff all the time, Mom. I didn’t always listen. This you know! You’d tell me to do something, and I wouldn’t do it! When you were talking to me I have this shut off valve and I just shut you off.” (He shrugs) “I was there, but I just turned you off. I got really good at doing that. It meant nothing to me, nothing whatsoever. Was I upset or traumatized? Hell, no! I wasn’t even listening! The last thing I remember clearly about me and you was you said good night to me and gave me a kiss. That’s the last thing I hold dear between us on the earthly plane together.” He chuckles and continues: “When you went into MM or ‘mom mode,’ I had a switch and I would turn you off. I would be there, and I would look at you but nothing would get through.” (God, how I know that expression!) “Oh, tell Pappa I just got a boat!” I tell him I will then, wanting to cram in as many questions as I could in such a limited time, I ask my next question. ‘Erik, who are my guides?’ “You have 56 of them. They’re organizing together to help you write a book. They say you’re going to do all the channeling yourself.” Wow, 56 seems like a pretty high number, I think to myself. I guess I need all the help I can get! But channeling on my own? That hardly seems possible! Erik breaks my reverie to ask, “Hey Mom, you asked about Allie and Jordan? I’ve seen Allie and I’m kind of upset because we just had an argument. You know how I can’t stand people telling me what to do? Allie is doing that for some reason. I don’t understand. I don’t remember her being like this on the earthly plane. She’s gotten kind of bossy and I have a hard time being around her. She got mad at me, because I didn’t agree with everything she said so she kind of banished me from her universe, and I told her if she wants to talk again, she knows where to find me.”“As for Jordan, we hang out together” He chuckles at the pun, because Jordan committed suicide by hanging herself. This upsets Kim, and she admonishes him “Erik you have the most irreverent sense of humor!” She then directs her attention to me, saying, “I think he does that partly to tease me.” ‘Yes, he’s always been a big teaser!’ I assure her. “Oh my God!” Kim exclaims, still rattled by his Erik’s comment. Amused by the effect his remarks made on Kim, Erik continues, “Yeah, Jordan and I hang out together and we’re really close buds. She’s come to visit you guys too. Jordan has gotten really really close to Aunt Denise. I thought Michelle and I were partners in crime! Oh! Jordan and Denise! Holy shit! Then, Erik abruptly changes the subject, obviously bored with where it was going. I could feel the pent up excitement as he again announced with pride, “I just got a boat! I finally got my own place. It’s like a condo. It’s my bachelor pad.” ‘So you can create all this and have a life similar to the one of earth?’ I ask. “Yeah, we can have everything we have on Earth. We can go out for pizza, have relationships, get married, it’s just the same, but we can manifest everything so much faster plus we don’t have the issues we did on the earthly plane. We have our life’s work, we travel, we can have children. I have my bachelor pad. It’s at the beach. But by the beach there’s a loch or fjord where I take my boat. It looks like Scotland here. I love it!” Kim says he’s showing her his place and she starts giggling. She says, “It’s sort of what you’d expect for a bachelor. He has a leather couch and a big flat screen TV, an end table with a lamp, a bed, a lamp next to the couch. That’s it! It’s pretty sparse!” Kim asks him, “No table? Where do you eat?” “On the couch in front of the TV!” he replies as though this should be blatantly obvious. I ask if he’s met Tommy, the son of a dear family friend who died in an automobile accident a few years ago. Nonchalantly, Erik responds, “Yeah, he’s here, he’s here! And Mom, he likes to go by Tom now. He’s married. He has kids. He’s living the good life!” ‘Do you hang out with him?’ I ask. “Yeah, some, but not like I do with Jordan and Denise. Tom’s busy with his wife and kids and his business. But yeah, I’ve been over there for dinner. Tom’s really happy living a really full life. He knows what he has now he couldn’t have had on the earthly plane. The way he passed was his destiny.” ‘Okay. Erik, there is something else I’m wondering. How do I know it’s you I’m channeling and not me making this all up?’ I ask. “Mom, you’re really anal about that! I’ll come to you in dreams, and they’ll be really lucid so you’ll have total recall. And I’ll tell you in the dream when I’m talking to you like ‘Hey Mom, it’s me.’” I still long for some sort of confirmation so I ask him, ‘Can you give me proof that it’s you speaking through Kim?’ After a long pause, he replies, “Michelle’s gift card. That’s the best thing you can do. You’ve been wondering about that. Mom does that work? That’s all I can come up with now. Gift card for Michelle. And I’ll tell you it’s me. You know my energy. You know if you hear ‘Hello Mother, what a beautiful day it is today,’ you’ll know it’s not me!” That comforts me somewhat, because I do sometimes hear his voice in my head when I talk to him between our sessions with Kim. Until the next one, I intend to bend his ear, practice picking up on his energy and voice, and basically make an utter nuisance of myself. Although Erik and I spent a great deal of time communicating with one another while he was alive, I agree that we may be communicating even more now that he’s in spirit form. Poor guy will probably need earplugs and a cave to hide in, but I guess turnabout’s fair play, Erik! Love you, Darling.

One of my wishes when it comes to losing Erik from the earthly plane is for him to “have it all” there. Unfortunately, the afterlife is not 100% perfect, not the panacea we all hope for. What he misses is not earth shattering, but, as a mother, I want only the best for my son. Read on.

Erik: I know the right thing to say is family. In all honesty, joking aside, besides my penis, I miss my family the most.

Me: Oh, no!

Jamie: It’s hard to tell when Erik’s pushing the line or if he’s really sobering up to the answer. Sobering up to the answer, he misses people, the connections and relationships, the most–with the people he’s supposed to be with.

Me: Well why is it different? Why should it be different?

Erik: That’s the point. It shouldn’t be that different, but people don’t believe—people on Earth—believe that death is the end. They don’t believe that you can belly up to some table and actually discover a way to talk to people in the afterlife. Life continues. You are not on this short little cycle.

(Pause)

Jamie: Oh, I guess he’s just speaking to the room, because he just turned away and said, “I can’t wait until people learn this fucking shit. Just to learn that life doesn’t begin and end; it’s continuous. (Throwing his arm out) And it goes and it goes and it goes and it goes.”

Me: So death is like dropping your body like a suit of clothes; that’s it.

Erik: Ta da! Mm hm. Yes.

Me: Okay. So what part of relationships do you miss? Do you miss the physical aspect of hugs? I mean, you and I have a relationship, but there are certain things missing, obviously.

Erik: C’mon, man. Are you putting words in my mouth?

Me: Yes, I am.

Erik: But I do miss—it’s the tangible, the contact that you have hand to hand. I dunno.

Jamie: Aw, I love this. His voice just drops like a real soft tone.

Erik: I dunno. I just want people to take time…

(Pause)

Jamie: He’s pausing.

(Pause)

Erik: To physically feel, you know, what is the texture of the curtain like? What is, you know, the softness of your sweetheart’s skin, how does their hair feel? I don’t know why people are choosing to be more independent and pull away from that, like snuggling isn’t good or something?

Being an extremely affectionate mother, I used to snuggle with my children all the time. Still do. They find it annoying when I still beg for them to sit in my lap, so I’m surprised to hear that Erik misses it.

Erik: We really—

Jamie (laughing): He’s funny.

Erik: —should start a campaign that snuggling saves lives.

Me: Snuggling saves!

Erik: Snuggling saves whether it’s with your pet, with your child—

Ah ha!

Erik: —your sweetheart. Snuggling saves lives. That contact that you have, you can’t replace it. When you let go and you’re in the afterlife, you’re an energetic body, and granted, you gain so much, but you do lose that physical body. Now what can that physical body do, right? Touch, resist, hold on to things. It can eat. It can shit.

Jamie and I laugh.

Me: I’m sure you don’t miss that.

Erik: Nah, not really. I definitely don’t miss constipation.

Jamie and I laugh even harder.

Me: I don’t think anybody would.

How did we get here? Should we pause for a Dulcolax commercial?

Me: Maybe the Activia people—(I sing the Activia jingle.)

Jamie: He was singing that, too!

Erik: It’s so contagious. I would tell people, you know, kind of my personal advice while you’re living is touch, reach out, hold someone, pay attention to what it physically feels like, cuz the emotions, you can continue to have those, and you can continue to have conversations. It’ll translate different, because you’re not looking at that person’s face, and you’re not physically touching them. You’re energetically touching them; you’re emotionally touching them; you’re mentally touching them, but all of this doesn’t require the physical body and the senses that we experience that don’t pertain to the physical body—

(Pause)

Jamie: I argued with him and said, ‘I think all senses pertain to the physical body.’

Erik: You know what the fuck I mean. Reaching out and really making sure that it’s real, right? You’ll tend to dismiss them. You don’t give them the same validity and strength and power that you would with another one. And (poignant pause) I wouldn’t want to see anyone that I know, that I’ve currently met on Earth, have that regret when they come here about not hugging someone enough or not remembering what the dirt felt like beneath their feet. That’s ridiculous. This is everything you can do right now, cost-free.

Me: That’s true, and I think that physical touch also evokes emotions, and that gets to the root that we are emotional beings. It seems like here, we mostly just think. We don’t feel physically, and we don’t feel emotionally as much as we should.

Erik: I know. We need to—here’s another line of T-shirts. (Jamie fumbles horribly on the word “T-shirts” by saying “Ter-sheets.)

Me (giggling) Ter-sheets! I like that.

Jamie (laughing): Ter-sheets! I translate verbatim. It’s terrible. (Pause) Unless he gets to the dirty words and then he makes me pause.

Erik: Another line of T-shirts is. “I am an emotional being.” Drop the “human.”

I think most people would either run away from you or run to you with a hankie if you wore that.

(Pause)

Jamie: Aw, he’s just kind of ranting right now. He’s talking about science and doctors and there are articles published and discoveries, all these things.

Erik: They can now say that your first reaction against whatever it is emotional, then it’s physical, and then it’s your thought. So, what the fuck is wrong with us that we always think that thought comes first? Holy shit. We’re missing two huge reactions that have already occurred, choose to black them out and ignore them and go straight to the thought process which is the last fucking thing that happens! And we give it more energy, more value, more control and then later on, we realize emotionally we were crushed, and now we have to be in therapy for a really long time and fix ourselves, and we wish we would have reacted a different way. But yet you’re not changing the process of you, your understanding of the process—you’re still latching onto what you’re thinking, and you’re not practicing identifying what you’re feeling. Got to identify—

Jamie: He’s got his little hands in fists, and he’s hitting his legs [to the beat of each word].

Erik: You’ve got to identify what you’re feeling! That’s it! That’s the answer to most of the shit you’re asking for.

Me: Emotionally honesty for yourself and others.

Erik: Yes.

Me: That seems to be your number one rant. It’s very important.

Erik: Mom, it’s—

Jamie (giggling): “Mom,” I love when he says that.

Erik: Mom, it is the foundation for anything that you ask. Anything!

Just a head’s up. I will not be able to post tomorrow as I will be having a very long day. It’ll be a great time to read through or revisit those archives though!

I know I don’t often post on the weekends, but my sister, Teri, emailed me this story that I found so intriguing, I couldn’t resist. I think every skeptic, including atheists, should read it. It’s all about perspective, people!

~Preparing to Be Born~
In a mother’s womb were two babies. One asked the other: “Do you believe in life after delivery?” The other replies, “Why, of course. There has to be something after delivery. Maybe we are here to prepare ourselves for what we will be later.” “Nonsense,” says the other. “There is no life after delivery. What would that life be?” “I don’t know, but there will be more light than here. Maybe we will walk with our legs and eat from our mouths.” The other says “This is absurd! Walking is impossible. And eat with our mouths? Ridiculous. The umbilical cord supplies nutrition. Life after delivery is to be excluded. The umbilical cord is too short.” “I think there is something and maybe it’s different than it is here.” The other replies, “No one has ever come back from there. Delivery is the end of life, and in the after-delivery it is nothing but darkness and anxiety and it takes us nowhere.” “Well, I don’t know,” says the other, “but certainly we will see mother and she will take care of us.” “Mother??” You believe in mother? Where is she now?” “She is all around us. It is in her that we live. Without her there would not be this world.” “I don’t see her, so it’s only logical that she doesn’t exist.” To which the other replied, “Sometimes when you’re in silence you can hear her, you can perceive her. I believe there is a reality after delivery and we are here to prepare ourselves for that reality.”

Since I’m not going to post until the day after Christmas, I’d like to wish you all a wonderful holiday. Think of your loved ones, because they’re thinking of you.

I also want to remind you of my interview on the Bob Charles Show tomorrow at 2:00 PM CST. If you’re interested in listening, put it on your schedule and click HERE!

To all of you who have lost loved ones, I’ve been thinking about you during the holidays. Even after four years, I look at the empty chair at our Thanksgiving table with a heavy heart. I find it hard to choke back the tears, but because this is a day of gratitude and no one wants it to be tainted with sobs, I do. It’s difficult to weigh the losses with the joys of having a loving family, my CE peeps, good health, and other blessings, but a balance must and can be reached. We still have holidays approaching, and I hope we can all wrap our arms around the joys and realize that, in the end, our loved ones are not really gone. They’ll be tossing back their own celestial glass of spiked eggnog along with us.

***********************

Me: Some think it’s becoming easier to speak with those in the afterlife.

Erik: Yeah, that’s not because we’re getting bigger and better. We have the same equivalent knowledge, you know, inter-dimensional travel, all of that. Humans are finally getting back to the norm. We’ve had lights out for a long time.

Me: Yeah, well, material science and organized religion put us off the path a little bit.

Erik: Yes. If you wanna facilitate it, you need to look at yourself as being an instrument.

Me: Okay.

Erik: And how do you fine-tune your instrument? The biggest fucking drum I can hit is don’t have any fucking beliefs. Don’t have an expectation that God’s voice is going to sound like booming lightening, you know.

Me: Really!

Erik: Because it might sound like a six year-old girl. Expectations will ruin your experience, and you find it true in life as well. For some people, for example, they have an expectation that something has to reach a certain timeframe. Humanly things that we do is we create an expectation so that if we achieve it, we’ll feel safe or we feel productive, like we’re in control. And if you feel the need to be in control—

(Pause)

Jamie (to Erik): I don’t understand that.

Erik: If you’re feeling the need to be in control, then you’re not understanding wholly that you are a part of a whole.

Me: Hmm. Interesting.

Erik: If you have this desire that you have to be in control—I’m not talking about fucking cleaning your house. That’s great. You OCD away. .

I wish he had OCDed a little bit when he was here. His room always looked like it was the place where a documentary on F-5 tornados might be filmed.

Erik: I’m not talking about being in control of the external world. That’s when you’ve fully signed on to the concept that you’re an individual and you’re apart from everything else and you must just be a badass because you have that special ability—to control the external world. That’s a crock of shit. You need to fine tune that instrument and realize you’re a part of a whole.

Me: Exactly. It’s hard not to have expectations. That’s like telling someone, “Don’t think of a pink elephant.”

Erik (in a monotone voice): PINK ELEPHANT.

Jamie and I laugh.

Jamie: He’s just repeating it.

Probably just trying to make me think only of a pink elephant for the next couple of hours. Great. Thanks, Erik.

Erik: You can spend a helluva lot of time talking about how to fine tune your instrument. There are so many people who really desire and want to communicate with the afterlife, but they don’t realize that their need can often snuff out the experience, you know, like we said, because of the expectations and because of the emotional quality of those expectations. Let’s, you know, if you were on a swing like one of those tree swings, and you’re swinging really high like a pendulum, and then somebody from the ground asked you, “Which way is the wind blowing?”

Erik: You have to get your tree swing to get centered and to get calm. You can’t be in total grief. You can’t even be in total joy. I’m not saying one is right and one is wrong. I’m saying you gotta get neutral. You gotta say on the fence. And then when it’s still and the person asks you, “Which way is the wind blowing?” you can say, “Oh, there is no wind now,” or “The wind is blowing east to west. So the way you position yourself can influence what you’re experiencing. People want to get at the truth, and to get to the truth you’ve gotta be a clear, free-flowing instrument.”

Me: That is so brilliant, Erik.

Jamie: I know! I want to give that a freaking standing ovation! Wow.

Me: Anything else about that?

Erik: No, they’ll get that. They’ll understand that, because it comes with a visual. You can talk about feeding yourself the good energy or the energy that your body needs. Just like the food your body needs, you gotta take care of it. Why do people think they can destroy themselves or ignore themselves and let themselves get sick but yet they think they have the right to experience everything, all of this. It’s like, “Really? You can’t walk the talk.

Me: Yup, but it’s pretty hard.

Erik: One of the most important things you have to do is shut off the logical part of your brain. Depend on the emotional, intuitive part to get centered. You can’t just go on with, “Am I doing this right? Am I talking to the afterlife?” and shit like that, letting your analytical mind take over is not going to let you get centered. You’re going to swing from one side to the other and not have any point of reference for which way the wind is blowing.

***********************

Tomorrow at 9:00 AM CST I’ll be appearing on Great Day Houston, a TV show hosted by the very talented and beautiful Debra Duncan. If you live in Houston, please tune into KHOU TV.

On December 5th, 12:00 PM CST, I’ll be a guest on the Jean Maurie Show. I hope you can join me! Please THIS on your calendar!

There’s one more spot for Jamie and Erik’s small group channeling call. If you want to talk to a loved one or ask questions about your life, please sign up HERE!

Last but not least, the “Best Orb Photo/Video” contest ends soon, so please submit your entry. The winner will get an autographed copy of my book, My Son and the Afterlife.

Jamie: Okay. He’s talking about in three years when science gets a grasp on spirituality, of afterlife—we’ll call it afterlife—he’s um. (Giggling) All right, Erik! He’s talking really fast.

Erik: For a long time in history, science and spirituality had to stand in different parts of the house, but really these two can go hand in hand. You’ll notice in the next three years, you’ll hear a lot of talk about machinery that’s able to identify subtle energy movements’.

Me: Hmm!

Erik: We already have machinery that can detect subtle energy. These are energies that are commonly unavailable to average sight, and, you know, seeing is believing, right? That’s what our culture says, and because we didn’t see it, we didn’t know to hunt for it. Now that we’re catching on to these things, first you’re going to see an explosion of how this subtle energy movement affects the health of the physical body.

Me: Uh huh.

Erik: Because health is a widely known acceptable market. We’ll want to listen and understand about that, so we’ll discuss that first. But really underlying all of this is if they can identify this subtle energy, then they can identify the soul without a body.

Me: Interesting. What is this machine that can detect subtle energy now? What is it used for now? Is it for this or another application?

Erik: They’re just using it now to look at the energetic fields around human bodies.

Me: Okay. For what purpose? For health? Just for fun?

Erik: No. It started out as curiosity, but then they found that certain patterns correlated with certain diseases and illnesses.

Me: Oh.

Erik: So, it’s an advanced way of diagnosing what is going to happen in the physical body, which has been the absolute fucking belief from the beginning in the whole Eastern world: You must maintain your energetic body so that your physical body can be healthy. It’s just another way to feed yourself.

Jamie: Oh, I really like that visual. He says we’re taught to feed ourselves well so that our physical body is better, but he made it sound like we have to feed it the right energy to keep our body disease-free.

Me: Hmm. Okay.

Erik: You’re right. We just haven’t gotten there in a belief system yet, and when science, in about three years, starts talking about these machines—of course they’re be in these obscure articles and kind of underground, and then it’ll turn into, you know, incredible little experiments before it ever hits fucking mainstream.

Jamie (to Erik): Brrrrrrrrrah. You have to back up, Erik.

I chuckle. I know how chatty he can be.

(Pause)

Jamie (to Erik): What is? The delay. She chuckles. He’s telling me the delay of scientific evidence into mass market used to be about 15 years. Now it’s about ten.

Me: Ah, that’s better.

Erik: In about 3 years it’ll be six, so it’s decreasing and that’s just because of the communication, like on the Internet and everything.

Jamie: He’s talking about how the news is going to change.

Erik: There will have to be channels on the Internet that are not opinionated—

Good luck.

Erik: —that are specifically enforced for factual evidence.

Me: Why is the veil thinning? A blog member wants to know, but I don’t know if it even is.

Jamie: Why is the veil ascending?

Me: No, thinning.

Jamie: Thinning. Yeah, that’s better.

(Pause)

Jamie bursts out in laugher for several seconds.

Jamie (still laughing) Maybe you have to deliver the answer like this: You gotta be really quiet, and then you lean in and you whisper it like it’s some nasty news, because that’s how he’s doing it.

That makes me chuckle. So like him.

Erik (whispering and talking like what he says is some momentous surprise): It’s like that the whole time. It’s just that you are GEROOOWING.

For all of you in or around the Houston area, please join me in my book signing the Saturday at 6:30 PM. The location: Barnes and Noble, 7626 Westheimer Rd. This is on the corner of Voss and Westheimer. Hope to see you there! Today, Erik’s addressing two completely different subjects only because the first one was so brief, I don’t want you to feel ripped off before the weekend.

*******************************

Me: One person wants to know what our relationship is in the afterlife since I’m also there. Are we supposed to assume that I greeted you when you crossed over even though I’m here, too?

Erik: No, because the “you” that’s already there is not my mother.

Me: Who is it?

Erik: My mother is in your body in your life on Earth.

Me: Well, if part of my spirit is there, what is that part?

Erik: It’s the collectiveness. It’s like where I am right now. I’m the collective of all my lives that I’m living, and it’s why—for those of you who think I died and got some fucking key to knowledge and that I’m just a badass and it pisses you off that I know shit because I didn’t go to school and fucking learn it—it’s because when you die, all of a sudden—when you are ready—granted the connection to all of your other lives that you’re livin’.

Jamie (giggling): Livin’.

Erik: And with this, you access knowledge. It doesn’t have to be done through a book—

Damn. Think of the tuition and headaches I would have saved.

Jamie: Aw. He’s saying, “When I talk to my mom, from that life, I’m Erik, and that’s who I am in this voice. That is who I’m attaching to, but I also have the right to communicate with, you know, my sister in my English life in 2060.

Me: Okay.

Erik: I’m not limited by time and space. Again, a lot of the questions that we have—just the language in general is based upon our concepts of time and space.

Me: Mm hm.

Erik: So, I understand why you’re asking that, but my mom’s spirit, her collective soul, would not have wanted to greet me when I crossed over, because for me and what I just experienced in my life, I left that woman on Earth.

(Pause)

Erik: Ah, I’m digging a fucking rabbit hole.

Jamie and I laugh hard.

Erik: I hope it made sense enough. If it bothers you, write more about it.

This is for all of you animal lovers out there. That includes birds, insects and, well I don’t know about cockroaches. For me, the jury is still out on that one. But on a high note, I refuse to smush ’em. That’s my husband’s job. No cleats though.

Me: Are there animals there?

Erik: Yes. Insects, plants—

Me: Are they all ones who have died or can you create your own Chihuahua?

Erik: You don’t really manifest another life form. It’s pretty wild. You can tend to plants and animals, but you’re not an owner of them. You’re a companion, but you don’t have ownership. There are different breeds of plants and animals that no longer exist on Earth or that haven’t come to exist on Earth that are in this higher dimensional planes.

Me: Even T-Rex?

Erik: Yo-yo, dinosaur!

Jamie (to Erik, in mock frustration): Why? (To me) He says he’s going to follow me around all day and say, “Yo-yo, dinosaur.”

Me: Oh no!

Jamie: Better than apples!

Me: Yeah, I remember he did that.

Jamie shakes her head.

Erik: Yeah, anything that existed or is going to exist on Earth is here.

Me: Do you have to take care of dogs and cats and so on or can they survive on their own?

Erik: Yeah, they can survive on their own. Remember, this is not a place where we have those needs—like you need water, you need food, you need this. So, animals can tend to themselves and there’s a pure line of communication between the two of them. You can talk to the animal and the animal can call back. Again, when I’m talking about conversations it’s more from the heart. I didn’t realize how much that frustrates me until we had these interviews today.

Me (in a voice that’s like a mother talking to her baby): So you don’t have to meow like a kitty cat?

Erik: No, but I’m sure when you get here you’ll still do it anyway, Mom.

Me: I’m sure. There was another question I wanted to ask about animals, but I can’t remember it for the life of me. What was it Erik?

Erik: How people can be animals?

Of course we are, but I didn’t want to pull rank on the guy.

Me: Yeah, that’s right. We can be animals.

Erik: If there’s a life form, then a person can be a part of that life form. So they can be an animal, an insect, a plant.

Oh, Erik. An insect is an animal. You must have missed that lecture in biology class.

Me: Oh! I remember what I was going to say!

Erik: What?

Me: Do you have a particular animal companion? I mean, do you hang out with a dog, a cat, a snake or anything more than other animals?

Erik (to Jamie): My mom’s pairing me up with a snake!

Me: Uh oh. Sorry.

Erik: No, no. I don’t have any companions right now.

Me: What about my puppy dogs?

Erik: Well, you can have ‘em!

Me: No, I mean the ones who’ve passed away. All of the ones.

Erik: Well, I get to see nut head every now and then.

He’s referring to Peanut, our Chihuahua.

Jamie: Nut head?

Me: Aw. Peanut!

Jamie: Peanut.

Me (to Erik): Nut head. Erik!

Erik: We don’t hang out every day.

**********************

Dear Reader,

The journey on which you’re about to embark will take you through stories that are deeply personal and involves a relationship between a mother and her son.

As a physician raised by two atheists, I had no personal belief system about life after death. In a word, I was a confirmed skeptic. As my journey progressed, my mind opened. It is my sincerest hope that yours will open as well and that you will have a greater understanding of your own life and what’s to come ahead.

Although Erik sometimes paints a rosy picture of the afterlife, time and time again he stresses that suicide is not the answer to one’s problems. If you struggle, please understand that the information in my blog and my book is no substitute for professional help. Please click here for a list of resources for help when you find yourself considering taking your own life. Know that they are readily available when you feel that hopelessness and despair that many of us feel from time to time in our lives.

I refuse all donations and ad revenue on the blog. It is my dream to one day establish a nonprofit organization that delivers a variety of spiritual services for those who have lost loved ones to suicide and cannot afford that assistance on their own. It’s a mission of love, sacrifice, and dedication.

Erik: That’s just Crazy Town. God is ever-loving. God is embracing. I’m just going to use the word, “God” as a very broad term. I’m hoping that everybody who’s listening can understand that term and put their own name to it if they want. But if you have a belief in a higher entity—something that is greater than the human mankind, I truly hope that your definition resonates with the reality of what’s going on. Shape God’s image however you want. Him or Her, whatever you want, but you gotta understand that “God” is ever-loving. Never going to say, “Oh, you die, but you didn’t behave like I expected you to, so I’m going to send you to Hell.” That’s crazy, you know? Think of it as unconditional love on steroids.

We both laugh.

Me: Pumped up!

Erik: It just doesn’t get sweeter than that. So, your belief system on Earth says that gays are going to go to Hell. If they signed up for it, then just imagine what’s going to happen to them if they’re closet gays and they never came out. They played the roles, and they had a belief system. They’ll think they’re a bad person—that they’re going to go to Hell for it.

Me: Aw.

Erik: Think about what their transition is going to be like, right? Cuz they handmade that for themselves. And they handmade it for themselves for a lesson. For a reason. God embraces them all. Everybody has their own right and their own free will to form their own belief system, to have their own thoughts, but really, when you get here, there’s no Hell. Hell’s definition is the absence of God or a lack of love for God, and it doesn’t exist. Sorry.

Me: Well, God is all there is, right? Is there anything besides God? Anything separate from God?

Erik: Not in our dimensional plane. There’s nothing but God.

Me: But from what I understand, in all realities, God is all there is.

Erik: What do you mean by all realities, Mom?

Me (laughing): I don’t know! You tell me!

Erik: You asked the fucking question!

Me: Well, it’s like everything is energy. Everything in ever dimension is all energy. Even matter is made of energy.

Erik: God is energy.

Me: Okay. Is there anything other than God?

Erik: God is the cleanest and purest of energy.

Me: Okay. Anything more about how gays are treated in Heaven? Eventually they’re taken out of that self-created Hell if they do believe in that, right?

Erik: If you have the belief that gays go to Hell and you are gay and you were in the closet, then you are hand making your experience that when you die, you’ll have a very rough time reconciling with yourself and accepting your own personal love for self. Because being gay is not negative. Nowhere in the solar system, nowhere on Earth, nowhere in your own personal closet are you going to find being gay as negative.

Erik laughs.

Jamie (laughing): You just laughed like a girl.

Erik: Thank you.

Jamie: He’s giggling is what it is.

Me: Uh oh.

Jamie: He finds it so hysterical that this is even a topic.

Erik: When I think about it more and more, I just find it so absurd that we still are in a day and time where people are shunned for their preference, their own personal preference. For their own life, they’re shunned.

Me: It’s crazy.

Erik: I mean this whole movement of enlightenment, this has gotta go to rest. So if you are gay and you know you are gay or you’re in the closet gay but you’re okay with being gay, when you die you are gay and gay. You’re happy and you’re fine and you have an afterlife. There’s really no difference, Mom. It’s just a person who’s living their life and being honest with themselves and their emotional self that gives them further gain when they’re in spirit. When you’re here, it’s all about being emotionally honest. You did a lot of hard work when you were on Earth, so imagine what you get when you’re here.

***************************

Dear Reader,

The journey on which you’re about to embark will take you through stories that are deeply personal and involves a relationship between a mother and her son.

As a physician raised by two atheists, I had no personal belief system about life after death. In a word, I was a confirmed skeptic. As my journey progressed, my mind opened. It is my sincerest hope that yours will open as well and that you will have a greater understanding of your own life and what’s to come ahead.

Although Erik sometimes paints a rosy picture of the afterlife, time and time again he stresses that suicide is not the answer to one’s problems. If you struggle, please understand that the information in my blog and my book is no substitute for professional help. Please click here for a list of resources for help when you find yourself considering taking your own life. Know that they are readily available when you feel that hopelessness and despair that many of us feel from time to time in our lives.

I refuse all donations and ad revenue on the blog. It is my dream to one day establish a nonprofit organization that delivers a variety of spiritual services for those who have lost loved ones to suicide and cannot afford that assistance on their own. It’s a mission of love, sacrifice, and dedication.

Me: Okay. Tell me about some of the work you do there, you, specifically, but others too.

Erik: Hi-ho, bitches; I don’t go to work.

Me: You’re so lucky!

Erik: I have a purpose and I have a passion, but I definitely don’t go to work.

Me: No nine to five, then?

Erik: No, and I think you’ll find that everyone here that you’re asking, you know, “Do you have a job; do you work”, they won’t be able to identify that it was either. It’s not like how it is there—that you design your life around what your talent is or what your work is or what you chose. And people often describe themselves by the work that they do. “Oh, and who are you?” “Well, I’m an architect.” Or “I’m an artist.”

Me: Exactly.

Erik: And if you ask somebody here who they are they go, “Well, I’m Erik”, “Oh, and what’s your passion? Do you do something?” “Oh yeah. I do da-da-da-da-da.” You tell them about your “work” and how you choose to engage in your life. So when I’m hanging out with my mom or hanging out with the people from the blog, I don’t consider that work. That’s really more of a discovery process of my own personal life as well as the lives I’m interacting with. It’s all about growth. It’s all about getting into the experience and the knowledge, and I think that on Earth, that description of work, jobs, career lacks that definition of, you know, “I do it for growth—for more encouragement, for more understanding.” Most people get stuck in one thing like licking stamps, and that’s what you do. You lick stamps. But they forget to leave that job once they’ve understood it and got into it and go on to something else. And I’d like to tell everybody out there who’s [reading]; you’re not stuck in your career. You’re choosing to be in that career. If you’ve learned it to the max, if you’ve maxed out, step over to the left, step over to the right, or step up. Make a change so that you can discover more growth in your life.

Me: Great advice!

Erik: I try.

Me: You try. You try hard, too. Do you have to go through some preparation or learning or apprenticeship for some of these jobs?

Erik: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I get what you’re saying. I get it. Yeah, because there are a lot of things, a lot of situations that the newbies—

Jamie (to Erik): What are the newbies?

(Pause)

Jamie (to Erik): Just explain everything out in detail.

(Pause)

Erik: There are a lot of positions that we don’t want, or we don’t need spirits to come into this place: Home, Heaven, higher dimensional planes, to just jump in and start helping. You need to have your own personal journey first, and through that, it places you into that growth pattern, that “job” or “career” that you want to do for yourself. So we don’t really run into spirits trying to force themselves into a position that really doesn’t fit their needs. So, it’s not like you have someone over you going, “Okay, you’re number two, and you can only hang out with the number two zone. You can’t go into the number three zone.” Like we don’t have that kind of structure. Everything is internally guided.

Jamie: That came with more visuals than words. (Laughing) Makes sense in my head, but I don’t think it translates well.

Me: So, here, you wouldn’t expect somebody in elementary school to do brain surgery. Let’s hope not! I always envision like when you were a rookie guide like you’re in the Olive Garden where a seasoned waiter follows you and you have this label that says “trainee” on it. The guy’s supervising how you take orders.

Erik: What the fuck? I’m not good enough for Bennigans?

Jamie and I laugh.

Erik: TGF Fridays? I’ve gotta be at the Olive Garden, huh?

Jamie: He’s just laughing.

Erik: No, you’re right. I knew I wanted to help people, because I started that through you. You understood what my choices were, you know, helping my family, my brother and my sisters. And to do that I found fulfillment. I found growth for myself. I found this calling, this purpose, whatever you want to call it. Now they weren’t going to let me jump into that in the highest degree. I did have to learn that I couldn’t interfere with people’s destinies, that I couldn’t just dole out advice if it was going to interfere with that person’s lesson, that there’s a difference between guiding someone and doing it for them. I needed to be very clear with that before I let loose. And also—

Jamie (to Erik): Also you get a lot of feedback? What do you mean?

Erik: You get a lot of feedback from those who are working in a similar area and in your similar interests. It’s not so much as a teacher. It’s more of—I wish there were better words for this shit, goddammit! It’s so fucking hard!

Jamie and I laugh.

Erik: You just know this shit. You sit down and have a goddamn conversation.

Jamie (to Erik): You’re ticked!

Erik: I’m ticked! Yeah, when you’re where I am, most of the time you’re feeling it. It’s a whole nuther fucking conversation in and of itself, and you sit down and you take away that and you want me to talk about it? Ah, man. That’s where it just gets crazy.

Jamie (giggling): He’s just smiling, but he’s so pissed about it, I can tell.

I chuckle. I can just see him.

Erik: You just can’t do it to the hundredth degree—do everything that you can or you want to. They’ll have someone that you can check in with, but it’s not this kind of thing where “You can’t do that, young man! You’ve gotta do it this way. No, no, no!” It’s not black and white. It’s not as tangible as it is on Earth. It’s kind of like them grooming you so you can sit with the information, right? Cuz if you can sit with it, be with it, make a relationship with the situation, then you already have the fucking answer. So you don’t have to go to somebody else to mentor or teach your ass because you didn’t know the information to begin with. That’s how it is.

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Dear Reader,

The journey on which you’re about to embark will take you through stories that are deeply personal and involves a relationship between a mother and her son.

As a physician raised by two atheists, I had no personal belief system about life after death. In a word, I was a confirmed skeptic. As my journey progressed, my mind opened. It is my sincerest hope that yours will open as well and that you will have a greater understanding of your own life and what’s to come ahead.

Although Erik sometimes paints a rosy picture of the afterlife, time and time again he stresses that suicide is not the answer to one’s problems. If you struggle, please understand that the information in my blog and my book is no substitute for professional help. Please click here for a list of resources for help when you find yourself considering taking your own life. Know that they are readily available when you feel that hopelessness and despair that many of us feel from time to time in our lives.

I refuse all donations and ad revenue on the blog. It is my dream to one day establish a nonprofit organization that delivers a variety of spiritual services for those who have lost loved ones to suicide and cannot afford that assistance on their own. It’s a mission of love, sacrifice, and dedication.

MY LIFE AFTER DEATH

MY SON AND THE AFTERLIFE

ABOUT CHANNELING ERIK

On October 6, 2009, my 20-year-old son Erik, took his own life. Since that sad and tragic day, an overwhelming sense of grief and despair propelled me into a search for answers. Answers that would provide me and others with comfort and hope. Some of those answers came from the many books I bought, but many came from an unexpected source…Erik, himself. read the story »

WHERE TO START

Then, I suggest you start with the very first post. In doing so you can follow my journey just as I did, through the inexplicable, inconceivable, and yet utterly undeniable surprises that I have encountered since my son''s death.